Novelist
and writer Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani considers why Nigerians put their
lives at risk and opt for dangerous routes to Europe when they fail to
get visas.
Even the official route for Africans wishing
to visit the West is paved with indignity. I still have vivid memories
of my first visit to the British High Commission in Lagos a little over a
decade ago.
The swarm of sweaty applicants in the unending queue, many of whom had arrived as early as 04:00.
The
battalion of whispering men who besieged me as soon as I arrived,
offering to manufacture whatever document I required, be it bank
statements or medical reports.
The fiery brouhaha that ensued from time-to-time over a newcomer’s attempt to sneak into the front of the line.
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani
Sometimes,
it was simply an enterprising tout giving room to the person who had
hired him to save a place. Not every Nigerian was cut out for the strain
of standing in the open for several hours.
Lashed with whips
Finally,
at noon, a pot-bellied security man relieved us of our misery and
opened the doors to the visa-processing section. “No rushing,” he
barked. Those behind kept elbowing those in front. The strong continued
pushing the weak aside.
Seeing their superior so
blatantly ignored, the scrawnier security men lashed out with their
short whips without caring which of us might be pregnant or too frail
for that kind of physical abuse.
Yelps, wails, screams
erupted from the crowd. And yet, we continued to push our way in for a
chance to get interviewed for a visa.
It did not matter whether you only wanted to visit the UK or if you intended to settle. The torturous process was the same.
All
this was nothing compared to the commotion at the American Embassy just
down the road, which had probably quadruple the number of applicants
the British did.
But oh the joy when someone succeeded in getting a visa to Europe or America. Oh the outbursts of exhilaration in families.
Sometimes,
successful applicants stood in front of their congregations during
“testimony time” at church, to declare God’s miraculous goodness in
granting them a visa.
“The devil tried to stand in my way but I kept trusting that the same God who parted the Red Sea would do it for me,” they said.
Inspired
shouts of “Praise the Lord!” sprang up from the congregation. Many of
these people had not been granted an immigrant visa, only a visitor’s
visa that would expire in months. Yet they had no plans of returning
anytime soon.
‘Andrew, Don’t Check Out’
In
the 1980s, the Nigerian government tried, through a series of adverts
on national television, to discourage its citizens from abandoning their
country as the economy steadily got worse.
The
“Andrew, Don’t Check Out” adverts became quite popular, but I do not
know that they helped to forestall Nigerians checking out in droves. As
we say in Nigeria, “Who no like better thing?”
People
have come to believe that living in the West has the ability to
radically transform the quality and status of one’s life, family and
community. To many who fail to get visas, it is still worth every danger
to emulate this.
They have seen migrants’ relatives
riding sleek cars and erecting mansions. Family homes getting a
constructed borehole in the backyard with neighbours allowed from
time-to-time to come in with containers and fetch drinking water.
Those
who stayed home have struggled to complete their first degrees in
Nigerian universities where strikes by the lecturers often ground
education to a halt, while their former classmates – the visa migrants –
amass advanced degrees from foreign schools.
And
whenever these exceedingly educated migrants finally amass the courage
to return to Nigeria, they are accorded greater respect and position
than those with a local education.
Risk takers
Those who queued up at embassies usually felt reasonably qualified to meet the stringent visa requirements.
But
there were those who would never be able to meet these conditions, yet
who desperately desired to, like others, graze where the grass was
greener – and someone would tell them about a route through Libya.
Stories of migrants who do make it across the Mediterranean inspire
others to risk their lives
For every applicant who fails to hoodwink embassy staff with tall tales and fake documents, there are others who succeed.
For every boat that sinks in the Mediterranean, there are those that make it across.
These success stories continue to motivate aspiring immigrants.
Of course, there are those stories of migrants who end up making a living from wiping bottoms in old people’s homes.
But
the folks back home do not really care as long as the foreign exchange
continues to arrive – currencies superlatively muscular against the
increasingly weak Nigerian naira.
Many embassies in
Nigeria, unable to cope directly with the influx at their gates, now
contract out the collection of visa application documents.
African governments did not care when their people were being whipped into order at embassies right on their own soil.
Now they are not pretending to care about those drowning in the deep, blue Mediterranean.
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